It's weird because if you ask people who have nothing to do with fighting it seems like common knowledge that men from the past were simply harder more manly men. However, fight fans convince themselves that fighting evolves with technology, and "fighting science". Also most fans learn about the sport backwards. You come in at the present, and watch back catalog until your satisfied. This gives you a poor handle on the evolution of the sport. If you start with the Spartans and take a historical account of boxing from the beginning to today it becomes pretty obvious that a fighter removed from his time and placed 100 years closer to now will kill most of who he meets. Boxing in the beginning was a means to strengthen solder's resistance to blows to the skull. In the beginning one solder would throw and another would take until KO'd. If you were taking blows your goal is to simply last. This gave the Spartans a knowledge most other generals today don't know. They knew exactly who could take what and who could give what. What it means to you is there used to be 135lb boxers that could take blows from 200lbers all day...no exaggeration, no bull****. There's a very good reason why weight classes don't come until the 1800's. It's crazy obvious given how far that'd be from the norm today that 135lbs of Spartan kills today's 135lber.

Our skulls only need about 80 to 100 psi on a knuckle to break or crack today because we do NO skull training. it takes about 130 to 135 psi to crack a Roman skull. These tidbits are hard to come by( reliable sources anyhow) and I dunno how hard the skull of a Spartan would be, but Roman and Spartan boxing are very similar and very much serve the same purpose.

If you let got of formal meet and agree fighting and take it back even farther. There is quite a long period of time where we are not the only man on the planet, but we are the weakest. Any Homo Sapien that went toe to toe with a Homo Ecrectus, a Neanderthal, or Homo Ergastor would surely murder a man today. We used to fight our mentally inferior physically superior cousins all the time. Only know weapons being spears(sharp stick!) and hand axe(sharp rock!) means most fights were hand to hand, and unarmed happened quickly. I doubt very many would box a living Neanderthal.

Best post I've read in weeks, it's obvious you are back in full swing Marchegiano. You write with skill and you know what you are talking about, ancient history is my favourite subject. Even Roman nobility were as tough as nails, very few men in history were tougher than men of the calibre of Gaius Julius Caesar, Gaius Marius, Quintus Sertorius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Marcus Porcius cato (that Cato who hated Caesar) and Lucullus. Men of iron, Caesar was a little fellow, about a Featherweight, in a bare hands fight to the death he'd KILL todays Welterweights, probably KILL Brock Lesnar in a minute,..... do I hear any Trolls laughing ???????..... well they shouldn't,.. here was a General and Dictator (in a Roman Republic sense) who was usually, THE FIRST man into battle, in fact, no self respecting General of true quality up to the great undefeated Great General, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough would not take part in battle. A General who did so had no respect from their troops and usually led to defeat.--------------------------- As for the Spartans, they are virtually unsurpassed in the history of War and unsurpassed in toughness, it was a DISGRACE to return home from a defeat in battle, mothers told their sons to come home on their sheilds rather than to surrender or to run away,.............. The Romans were the masters of Total War, when they won a battle,..... it was THE END for that race, or nation, or religion, they EXTERMINATED ALL Opposition, if you didn't beat the romans once you dissapeared from history.------------------------------ The point I'm making is, only the HARDEST men, women and children survived. Boxing was not a sport in any modern sense of the word, it was way too serious to be a game, losing a bad option, especially to a Spartan and most Greeks, if you didn't win at the Olympics back then, you were NOT WELCOME back home,.. EVER............................ Boxing went underground after the fall of the Roman Empire because life was even harder and was not a viable spectator sport,....... it was purely Military activity until James Figg turned up and became popular enough with the Bigwigs to be allowed to spread the sport through England and teaching members of the public the basics of boxing,..... for a small fee of course.